Queen of Hearts Challenge

I haven't been posting for a very long time, I hope I'm back on a regular bases now. I missed last years Quietfire Design Queen of Hearts challenge, but I had some fun playing this year. I have a couple of projects and was working on a needle felted wristband with a heart, not quite done with that so I'll have to show that in a future post. 

Queen of Hearts Mixed Media Canvas

Queen of Hearts Mixed Media Canvas Journal Page

I spread gesso on a 5.5in X 7.5in piece of canvas fabric. While the gesso was still wet I rubbed on red iron oxide craft acrylic paint and pressed a texured paper towel in and lifted it off. I drew several concentrec heart shapes in the wet gesso with the end of a paintbrush. Once dry I added more iron oxide, turquoise and cinnamon brown paint.

The abouve right photo is the finished canvas, with a needle felted heart added and glued into my recycled journal.

Queen of Hearts Mixed Media Canva

Queen of Hearts Mixed Media Canvas finished

This is another raw canvas with gesso and craft paint. It is about 7.5in X 11in. It's hard to see, but I used a Quietfire Design flourish stamp and some Inca Gold as well.


This is the finished canvas with a needle felted heart and a pendant charm. I plan to make a background on an artist canvas and mount this piece.

Queen Of Hearts Challenge

I haven't have much time for art lately, but today I got inspired to enter the Queen of Hearts Challenge on Quietfire Style blog, check the link for all the details.

I did a journal page with some heart shaped playing cards from the dollar store. I used my Zyron to put adhesive on the back of one card and sprinkled sugar beads on. For the other card I used the face side and added the word "of" and a label cut and embossed with the Cuttlebug Build a Flower set. This was stamped with the Quietfire stamp "All that's important". The sugar bead heart is mounted with pop dots. The page is coloured with Fired Brick and Tea Dye Distress Ink. I used the flourish stamps from the Quietfire Design Queen of Hearts set. The flower is pulled from a silk flower stem. The date Feb 11 is from a West Coast Express train ticket and the 20 is computer generated.

This also is my entry for the Created Byhand Challenge

Creative Escape Journal Page Aug 31

Creative Escape Journal Page Aug 31
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

This page in my Creative Escape Journal evolved this morning with inspiration from a link on the MmarioKknits Yahoo group. One of the members posted about this Erika Knight baby hat pattern which has a lovely edging on the bottom that the member is using for other projects. I saw the flower and edging and thought it just had to be done in my journal. This is done on one of the coffee dyed watercolour pages. I converted an old black and white photo to sepia and layered it over a kraft and dark brown cardstock. The lace flower and edging are knitted with 2.25 mm needles and a light brown cotton thread. I used some of the same thread to sew the edging to the edge of the page and to sew a button to the centre of the flower. The words are rubber stamped with a clear alphabet set and Versafine Vintage Sepia ink. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Pink Flower Journal Page

Pink Flower Journal Page
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

This is the journal page I designed earlier and can be seen here. I added a vellum ellement like the sample in an earlier post and a silk flower. Now I am looking for the perfect photo to use on the facing page.

Journal Page Tomato 2

Journal Page Tomato 2
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

Judy, this is for you. I put this new set of journal pages together yesterday. I really like the structure of a cut tomato so this is a photo of a half tomato digitally layered over a scan of painted watercolour paper and a couple of special effects. This is printed on watercolour paper and is ready to be added to a future journal.There is a slight variation on my Flickr, but I like this one the best.

Journal Page

This is one of the pages for a journal I am still working on and I am including some old family photos taken with an old box camera I had. Most of these are photos that no one else has, so I am making journals for gifts. I used a new cut and emboss folder that I just got yesterday from Cherish The Thought and made doors to show parts of the photo. I am very happy with the result.
This shows the photo with the doors open. The decoration above the door is part of Tim Holtz style label embossed with Tim Holtz Damask Texture Fades embossing folder. and sponged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

Creative Escape Journal Pages

I have done some journaling on a couple of the pages in my Creative Escapes Journal. Here is some rather bad poetry and equally bad lettering, but it is my poetry and lettering and my journal so it doesn't really matter to anyone else. At least I got brave enough to put gel pens to paper. I created the poem back in April when the lilacs were actually in bloom, but just got the words into my journal today.For the journaling on this page I covered an area lightly with white gesso then wrote my words with a gel pen on white tissue paper. I tore the tissue close to the lettering and then glued it to the page with matt medium.

Journal Page Background

I couldn't get on the computer for very long yesterday, but I was on it just long enough to play with this photo.
And I turned it into this journal page just waiting.....


and this one too. These are journal pages without a home right now, but I'm sure they will make it into a journal soon.

Some Pages From Creative Escape Journal

These are a few of the pages in the journal. The pink pages are watercolour paper coloured with beat cooking water and the brown coloured are tinted with coffee. Other pages are some of my photos printed on watercolour paper. I've added silk flowers to a few pages and the rest are awaiting journaling. Most of the pages are Kraft cardstock.

Queen of Heart Journal Page

Queen of Heart Journal Page
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

Judy, one of the byhandartists members proposed a challenge to do a project on the theme of Queen of Hearts so I did a page in my journal. I used fired brick Distress Ink to colour the page, found a vintage Queen of Hearts playing card image on-line, and inked the edges with Memento rich cocoa ink. I ran the image through the Xyron and added Sugar Beads. The frame is the piece left from the Watercolour Card I did a couple of weeks ago. The words "Queen of" and "heart" are Quietfire Design stamps rubber stamped with Blazing Red StazOn ink on thick cardstock, cut and attached with double sided tape. The lace along the bottom of the page is a piece of edging I knit from red no. 10 cotton and 2.25mm needles.

Journal Page "The Wedding"

Journal Page "The Wedding"
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The challenge this week over on the Created Byhand Challenge is "Times Gone By" so I did a journal page of by grandparents wedding photo. All rubber stamps are from Quietfire Design. The journal is filled with recycled paper from Ruby Dog's Art House and this page is brown cardstock with the cream vertical and horizontal stripes already on the page. I ran pale pink cardstock through the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder and centered it on the larger square. The next layer is burgundy cardstock run through the Textile embossing folder and rubbed the high points with white pigment ink. The wedding photo is placed at an angle and the words are stamped on light brown text paper. Lace and ribbon are added to the cream stripes. The quote is stamped on pale pink caardstock and layered over blue cardstock. The corner flourishes are stamped with white pigment ink and the quote is added over this.

52 Quilts Journal Week 15

52 Quilts Journal Week 15
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The background is a fabric sample and the pendant is a piece from a metal steamer. This was painted with bright bronze and espresso metal paint. I glued the flat round bead on and then wrapped it with specialty yarn and maple coloured cotton. The fringe at the bottom has some odds and ends of black and white beads knotted on.

52 Quilts Journal Week 14

52 Quilts Journal Week 14
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

Another of my endless fabric samples, love this one, and glass leaf charms. I did a bit of machine stitching with rayon thread following the outline of some of the squares in the print.

52 Quilts Journal Week 13

52 Quilts Journal Week 13
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

More fabric sample, rubber stamping on coffee stained cotton scrap, jewelry findings and odd beads, some from my art friend Beth. Check out those legs, should have given her a bit more of a high stepping kick. I did a random meandering line of straight stitch to give the feel of motion and stitched the stamped fabric with rayon thread.

Sewn Illusions Journal Page 3

Sewn Illusions Journal Page 3
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

For this page I used a green background from a bulk supplies store. It looks similar to dryer sheet but coloured. I stitched various scraps of fabric to the background then attached a leftover sample of the dragonfly paper-cloth. This was glued to the album page with sepia Decoupage Finish. I rubber stamped some clear stamp images with black and purple dye inks.

Great Weekend

Last weekend was pretty great, I started Sat morning with a little weeding, not my favourite activity, but it makes the yard look better. When I came in I decided to search in boxes for a piece of denim fabric I had, didn't find the denim, but opened another box and found to my great delight the shuttle for my knitting machine. It went missing during our move and I probably would have used the knitting machine last year to make the felted journal wraps instead of hand knitting 13 of these in such a short time. Oh well, I'm sure everyone who received the journals appreciate them being hand knit instead of by machine. Sat afternoon I went to Cherish The Thought scrapbooking store in Port Moody for the demo of the Quick Kutz Squeeze die cut machine and make and take. We made these cute cards using the dress die and an embossing folder and an alpha die set.

Then I decided I liked the Moxie alphabet and used it to put a title on my Sewn Illusion journal. I liked the cover the way it was, so didn't do much to it besides the die cut letters and I borrowed the ribbon and sewing bobbin idea from Penelope that she used for the Tea Book.

Sewn Illusions Page 2

For the second page in this journal I rubbed gold gel paint on the edge of the page with my finger. The sewn part is a bunch of various scraps stitched with straight and zig zag stitches. I used an alpha set of rubber stamps and white pigment ink for the word colours and embossed with pearl embossing powder and Quietfire design stamp "Art" stamped with white pigment ink embossed with Hemetite embossing powder.

52 Quilts Journal Week 6

52 Quilts Journal Week 6
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The embellishment on the page has a bit of a story. Shortly after we moved in, my daughter was by the stove and we heard a clink. She said a spoon had fallen between the stove and counter. Well we retrieved the spoon, not one of ours and obviously already there and just finished falling. While we were getting the spoon out this pendant was also found under the stove. I used two sample fabrics and added the found pendant. This page was edged with gold gel paint after it was glued to the back of week 5 page.

"Tea" Fat Book Page

I recently finished my contribution to a collaberative book project with members of the Vancouver ATC Group on the theme of tea. For my pages I used tea dyed Distress ink on the paper, then glued images from paper napkins with matt medium. I added a bit of rubber stamping and a small piece of knit lace. There is also a few beads glued to the Lavender napkin image. I made an extra copy just in case so I was able to use it to tip into my assorted paper Zutter Journal. The holes were pre-punched so I wove some ribbon and used brads to hold the page to a cardstock tab in my journal.


This is the back of the page with more rubber stamping and an old coupon from coffee and tea products. The page forms a pocket for a "tea bag" tag with the other "T" technique used.
You can see this journal in my Flickr Photos.

Sewn Illusions 1

Sewn Illusions 1
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

I got this wire bound journal with black pages at a real big discount without knowing what I would do with it, then the I saw this project in Sew Somerset winter 2009 and thought it would be perfect. I used the leftover piece from the paper napkin dryer sheet and stacked several fabric sample pieces together. These were stitched together with black thread in straight and zigzag stitches. The black page was stamped with flower stamps in sage and white pigment ink and the sewn piece was glued down, The buttons and the label from a fabric sample were glued on to finish the page.